C2E2: Marvel reveals their Big Shots!

Last month, Marvel announced Big Shots, a brand new initiative spotlighting three major launches of all-new ongoing series for the Marvel Universe’s hardest-hitting heroes. At the time, we were given the details of the first of the three books, Moon Knight. Due for release in May, Moon Knight will be written by Brian Bendis with art chores by Alex Maleev (SQUEAL! One of my favourite comic creator teams of all time!). The other two Big Shot books were revealed as Punisher due in June and Daredevil in July, but the creative teams were not mentioned.

That changed last weekend at C2E2, when Marvel finally revealed who will be writing Punisher and Daredevil. Click through to find out the teams behind these two new books.

Newsarama spoke with Greg Rucka, who returns to Marvel after nearly a decade to write Punisher. Contrary to last month’s reveal, Punisher will be on sale in August with art duties by Marco Checchetto. As opposed to Bendis’ plans to shake up the Moon Knight universe a little, Rucka stated he won’t be straying too far from the source material and origins of Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher:

“There are some characters you go to, and you’re like, “You know, lots of people have tried different approaches to them, and they work to different extents. They’re different flavors.” Frank doesn’t have that problem. There is a baseline that is very clear in this character, in my opinion, and I have no urge to #### with that at all. In all sincerity. It’s working, it’s dynamite for the character, it defines him well — I’m not going to go in there and mess with that, no way.”

Newsarama also spoke with Mark Waid, who will be writing Daredevil with art by Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin.

Waid discussed the tone he’ll be using with Daredevil:

“Shadowland was about as dark as Matt could go, and while Daredevil will not be a happyshinyretrobright series by a long shot, we are gonna tweak the tone a bit and have Matt play a little more firmly in the Marvel Universe proper. A little more humor (people tend to forget that Matt’s actually a clever wit), still plenty of danger and menace, still at heart a crime book…but we plan to deliver a Marvel comic that, you know, despite its excellence, won’t drive you to drink.”

It appears to me that Marvel has its street-level crime fighters in good hands for the forseeable future, ironically putting the heroes from the dark corners of the Marvel Universe into the spotlight. And I couldn’t be any happier.

So head over to Newsarama to read both full interviews and get ready for street level vigilantism…You know you love it!